Mimosas
by Citizen Cane
Summary: House's struggle in the wake of loss and confrontation of personal demons.  Implied Houseteen and then some.  Rated T to be safe, as most 'minor adult themes' are somewhat "between the lines".
1. House

It's a cold, grey morning- the kind that has a way of tinting the world blue- and he wants to make a Twilight reference but there is nobody there to listen and even then none of his usual audience would get the pop culture throwback.

"Amateurs." House half grunts, half laughs to himself as he takes the second, deep drag of his morning cigarette.

He doesn't miss people outside of these moments, where he has wit and knowledge to bestow upon them, purely out of his own overwhelming generosity. He understands, conversely, that they do not miss him. At all.

"Fine by me…" He murmurs to himself, going cross-eyed to watch the cigarette cherry come to life with another pull, glowing a piercing orange against the muted backdrop of his surroundings- a tiny beacon in the maelstrom of emotions reminding him, reminding The Addict, that all he'll ever need are the vices that have kept him company for all these years.

He leans back against the steps of the stoop, keeping himself upright with his elbows while he extends his battered leg in unison with a slow exhale. The set of mimosas he brought out sit untouched beside him in the company of the telltale orange bottle that defines him. He gave up denying this fact ages ago, when his thumb trembled against the plunger of a syringe…

House shakes his head to knock his thoughts off their course, knowing that dwelling will only blaze a trail to sorrow and he's had enough of that icy knot in his stomach for a lifetime. Worried, he reaches for the bottle and shakes out two pills, reconsiders, and makes it three- he has to act quickly. The terror he keeps stifled and buried is never so strong as when he sits and lets his mind wander. It always brings him to the open wound still festering on his heart; ugly and hostile and growing. Like his leg, it won't heal and in acknowledging it he only admits his own vulnerability and the realization scares him.

He will _never_ recover from this.

With the wound exposed he feels everything and he feels it amplified because for years on end all he's felt is nothingness, the cold bite of resentment, and the dull ache of dependency. Now, emotions he taught himself to hide and ignore are demanding their time in the forefront of his consciousness and he does not know how to put the lid back on this Pandora's box.

The grief is overwhelming and he is drowning in it, aware of the fact that he is but unable to do anything more than what he's best at: self-medicate. If that makes him a coward then he vows to himself to live with that because he doesn't care, can't care, anymore. The wound is just too big, too exposed, and there is no more room left on his back for demons, no more closet space to lend to skeletons. After years of chasing, of vying for it, he has what he only thought he wanted- the knowledge of his limits.

He's at his breaking point.

The war that he's been waging, against the world and everything in it, has been fought primarily and for so long in his head and now that there is nothing left but hindsight he sees it all in crystal-keen awareness. Something like despair stirs in him now that the armor built over so many bitter years has started to chip, now that the pieces are starting to erode and the decay is progressing too quickly to contain, making it impossible to salvage all he's worked so hard to build. There's no choice now but to wait for it all to crumble and bury him because that is destined to be the fruit of his labor.

He can't fight the instinct to beat fate to the finish line, to do it himself so he can deny someone, somewhere, the satisfaction. If he's already numb and empty when the hammer falls then he wins. It's cutting off his nose to spite his _own_ face because it's his life and his choice and _he_ is the only thing allowed to control it.

He's gritting his teeth to the point that he's bitten clean through the filter of his cigarette and the sharp, acrid taste of poison cotton numbs the tip of his tongue and sets his gums tingling. House turns and spits the ravaged cigarette into one of the mimosas and picks up the untouched one to partake in, mostly to get the taste of ashtray out of his mouth. The hint of champagne touches the back of his tongue as an afterthought, well after the first gulp is already past his teeth and down his throat, simmering in his nervous belly. He makes an abrupt, grating sound as he hocks up phlegm and spits it out for distance, intrigued momentarily as it catches in the morning wind and lands with a definitive 'squick' on the rear windshield of the car parked in front of his apartment.

"Charming."

He doesn't startle at the familiar voice, the husky little tease of syllables he's memorized and come to adore, and he makes no move to acknowledge that she's coming out to sit with him. Behind him, actually, slender legs framing his shoulders now. The hairs on his arms and on the back of his neck bristle with anticipation and he's sucking in a sharp breath before she even has a chance to touch him. He eases back against her as graceful fingers spill over his shoulders and he doesn't stop until he feels his head against her stomach, a sigh escaping past lips parted with private relief when she snakes her hand beneath the collar of his t-shirt to rub his chest and tease the thatch of hair there.

She is a pond of strength and comfort he has come to drink deeply from but even she cannot restore him and he feels the futility weighing on them both as he all but collapses into the rock she has had to become for him. His thigh protests the small display of need and he moves to rub the mangled area through his pajama bottoms, turning his body in an attempt to bury his face against her sleepshirt under the guise of alleviating pain. It's all smoke and mirrors, lost on her at this point- Remy's come to know him well.

"House…" She coos but the sound is muted by the white noise of a Vicodin high and so she clears her throat to try again, bolder this time.

"_Greg._"

He twists his head, an awkward pivot of his neck with earnest intent to listen to her, and now that she has an audience there is nothing to be said because it's hard to understand and soothe grief when you're the cause of it.

The look in his eyes is a withered one, muddy rain puddles replacing glaciers, and he lays there still and bewildered, waiting for her to say something, anything, to make everything all right. Yet that expectation is too tall an order to fill and distraction is the only true comfort she has for him. She strokes his hair, fingers diving into salt and pepper waves and she wonders to herself if he ever plans to get it cut again. He closes his eyes and turns to sigh against her stomach, his breath hitting in a hot burst of finality. She looks down at him and realizes what he's doing, watches as the strength and fight drain from his bones thanks to the emotional bloodletting in that brilliant mind of his. She was a kid, once. She had a dog and she saw it crawl under the porch and assume the position and she knows. Fucking hell, she knows.

He's getting ready to die.

"Hey…" She gives his hair a playful tug and his stubbled cheek a gentle pat, trying to tease him back to attention. She denies him when he shifts to try and hide his face in the crook of her arm, putting a hand on either side of his head so that he has no choice but to look up at her from her lap, even though she'll appear upside down. Remy leans forward to hover over him when he opens his eyes and can't help but notice the he looks exhausted for the trouble.

"Hey…" He grumbles back to her, past the lump in his throat but not louder than the sandpaper edge his words always have. All he can think is that she's beautiful and the thought is an obsessive one: from her adorable nose to the knick of a scar on her cheek, every last detail is vivid in his mind. His eyes meet hers and it holds him while his stomach turns on itself, their surroundings fading into white glare like inverted tunnel vision.

He's not prepared for her to kiss him from this position and his body tenses, his lips clumsy against hers and his hands unable to do more than twitch in bumbling confusion until they find her face. She holds the embrace until it emboldens her confidence, sighing into his return as she breaks it off.

"I love you, Greg. You did the right thing."

Remy hauls back without another word and slaps him hard across his face, her palm throbbing electricity to her fingertips afterwards, hand stinging as she balls fists into the material of his t-shirt to hoist him up.

"Now _wake up_."

It's a rush straight out of a science fiction movie, like some kind of warp drive, surroundings blurred into obscurity with the sense of forward propulsion bringing stomach contents to the frontline. It's all color and lights in no discernible pattern coupled with a feeling of weightless helplessness but there is a fixed point on the horizon and he's hurtling towards a widening chasm of pure white, about to breach.

He breaks the surface like a man seconds from drowning- with a gasp and wide, frantic eyes- to an explosion of sights and sounds he's not yet able to process. Shadows pass in front of him in a bustle, urgency detectable despite the shapelessness and it's the sounds that he's able to digest first: the beeps of machines and the wheeling of gurneys, the clack of metal instruments against surgical trays.

Coughing, no…choking, racks his body and sets his lungs on fire because he can't catch his breath and it's merciless. House tries to clutch his aching chest but a barrage of hands are there to subdue him, his panic breeding aggression in his movements of protest.

Cameron's is the first face he recognizes, her eyes filled with worry and default concern, the knowing glint even brighter in contrast with the dark circles. She turns to say something that sounds like 'forget it' to the Australian shouldering through the shadowy onlookers with defrib paddles in a white-knuckled grip but he can't make out the words with any certainty. He falls back unceremoniously against the stale hospital pillows and cringes because everything hurts and it feels like everything is closing in on him while Cameron speaks again, the sound a disorienting echo.

"He's back."


	2. Chase

Robert Chase stands unmoving just outside the recovery room, his hands tucked deep into his pockets to keep them from wringing one another and he keeps them clenched in tight fists to resist the urge to jingle what few coins he has. His unshaven jaw is set in a stern clench but the dull ache in his teeth only just registers. Cold blues- beady little pearls of keen vigilance swimming in bloodshot white- are settled on his resting mentor beneath a furrowed brow because he's beyond angry that his ex called him away from his drinking for this.

It feels as if there is nowhere in the world to go to get away from House- where is there left to go if he can't even retreat into his own mind? And how unfair is it that House can do it, that House can lose himself in his own head and nobody sits him down for talks of grief counseling and AA meetings? It's because nobody knows what he knows and what he knows is something he'll never understand, something he'll never forgive.

He's only angry because Cameron was right in what she said of them both.

The rest of that turmoil is the grief over loss, which he doesn't believe can be cured in any number of steps. Reaching "Acceptance" will do nothing to bring Remy back and the Australian is weary of hollow victories.

Another part of him is angry with his whole for running to the ER after getting the call, like a dog under command- no thought, no protest, just absolute obedience. Is that not the very thing his teacher taught them to reject? He knows if the roles were reversed he would not have woken to see House holding fast to at-the-ready defrib paddles. He knows, first hand, that were you to rely on him when treading water you would drown waiting for Gregory House to come to your rescue. Why, then, were so many people quick to flock to his?

For a moment his lone presence in the area has him contemplating smothering him with a pillow because there is a darkness in himself that he keeps at bay so as to never have to face it, though occasionally he's reminded by its presence in his mirror. It is black and nasty, a wicked little something that glints behind his eyes and hides in shadows behind his wide, white smile. The very best he can offer is an attempt to mask it with a well-groomed exterior and pray that he can get by on superficiality. It's a struggle he endures alone because the people around him can never understand what it is to swallow back a wolf, never have to fear the fury of gnashing teeth and tearing claws- there is only one person he knows who could possibly comprehend but that person has already surrendered to the beast.

He tries to distract it with top of the line gadgets and sacrifices pretty young things to its gluttony, at one point almost nightly, but nothing he can think to do satisfies the monster. It was only in the beginning that alcohol was able to tranquilize it but the damnable thing developed a taste for it all and is hungry as ever and even more in control, now, than it had been. He feels it bristle inside of him and hears the growl beneath his syllables when he speaks, especially when it's Cameron's ID that comes up on the cellphone screen.

Chase knows that the wolf is a murderer; he can hear its vile little whispers and feel the subtle nudges it gives and on the worst of nights it all seems almost logical. The ceremony that he stands on is unattended and it reminds him of the pointlessness. He sees himself developing a need for the ugliness he tries to stifle and is starting to think that the wolf is his only true friend, which is of course just the way it likes it. He thinks, quite often, of Cameron and the constant fear in her soft expression after he revealed it to her, after he let her in close enough to let her see what he truly was. And she ran. '_They will all run_,' it reminds him, begging for the last of a bottle. '_But you will always have me._'

Remy had enchanted it, endeared herself to it and had miraculously tamed it by sitting down to coffee with him one morning. Refuge was found in quiet, civil conversation that made him feel almost normal and far less exhausted from his efforts at decency. It had even dared to fall in love with her, something that rendered it vulnerable since the first time Chase had glimpsed it in the mirror. He had thought, up until a certain point, that his life had ended with Cameron's departure and thus he could put his heart in a box and store it in his closet, because what use was it to him in pieces? Remy showed him that there was indeed life beyond the divorce, one that was worth living. That was the thing about terminal patients, he had to suppose: they truly knew a thing or two about doing most anything to the fullest. Chase had thought that with her help he could save himself.

She's gone now, though, and the wolf is enraged by the void she's left. Oh, how angry it is…thirsty for retribution and almost desperate to fill the hole where it used to hold her in its heart. Unlike most others, however, Chase knows _why_. He's sworn to no secrecy but knows he must handle this new piece of information with utmost care for it is the atom bomb in his arsenal against House.

Their back and forth has always been a source of amusement- the pranking, the one-upping, the bragging rights. Through opposition they grew closer than either admits, rendering them a dangerous two-wolf pack. Chase has studied under House the longest and he swallows back resentment when foolish pricklings of fondness surface for the misanthrope that had become a father figure without warning or invitation. The yearning is unbearable: growing up rich meant nothing to him because a family cannot be bought, fathers cannot be rented, and when your mother loves a bottle more than you you can't trade her in for one that doesn't.

And through their closeness a seed of expectation was planted as there is a heavy crown to inherit, a kingdom built on a lifetime of brilliance and genius that will be left at his feet when it is his time. So he bides it and stays in line, watching his mentor with a hawk's eye and following his actions religiously because he knows his moment is soon. House's practice will be his, it has boiled down to a simple matter of waiting and the wolf is brutal, but patient. The mentor made a costly mistake, though. He has taken someone away that was very dear to him and now Chase will do the same, usurping a tyrant to lay claim to what is rightfully his.

There is no room in this world for dictators.

Chase turns away from the window and sees Cameron at the far end of the hallway, tries to silence the anger that starts to bubble from his stomach into his chest, where a tight knot burns- a great many tragedies in his life are Cameron's fault. If only she didn't check up on House, if only she didn't have the blind adoration that brought her to his apartment to find him passed out and foaming, if only she had just let the bastard kill himself. Then, he would've gotten the practice out of simple office politics and a strong alliance with Foreman but because of her he must now instead form a pact with his wolf of pure betrayal.

He passes her darkly and makes it a point to have their arms brush in passing, his tone low and laden with disgust.

"Long live the king."


End file.
